This week BEX celebrates our 15th anniversary. I could not be more thrilled to still be in business and, more importantly, still enjoying the ride. I thank everyone in this industry, and especially the team behind me, for letting me live out my dream.
I am not a huge fan of overly sappy reflective pieces. They are just not me, but I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on the last year in my own way.
Strongest Team We’ve Ever Had
The highlight of the year is easily the team. This is the strongest, most cohesive and most effective staff BEX has ever had. That was not always the case.
We lost staff through COVID, and, being a very small company, that was rough. We handle almost everything HR-related ourselves, so trying to keep the company going while adding recruit-hire-train tasks on top of that was a lot.
Losing long-term staff uncovers holes in your internal processes pretty quickly. We struggled with things that often got done without us realizing who did them until they suddenly were not getting done anymore. Out-of-date processes came back to bite us many times as we hired new staff and tried to train using methods we had far outgrown.
I am beyond thankful for the team mentality and attitude toward constant improvement that has become pervasive.
Hiring a new team to cover Nevada felt easy. We seem to have landed unique individuals who are enthusiastic about doing a good job, who are not afraid to fail, and who are enjoying building out a new product.
Growing Capabilities
Around the office, we like to say, “We’re really good at doing things the hardest possible way.” That applies to anything new we’ve ever tried. We typically fall flat on our face the first time, and the next time (only slightly improved), and on and on until we become proficient. Failing upward is not exclusive to the tech industry. We possess an enormous amount of grit and determination to stick with new things until we master them, and that I am very proud of.
On the Editorial side, this year we have increased coverage on important issues facing the industry—from the rise of misinformation and organized resistance to the increasingly urgent need to grow our power supply. Analysis of emerging important issues facing the industry notwithstanding, the day-to-day coverage of projects in early planning stages remains our top priority.
The DATABEX team has been diligently cranking on adding new projects to the platform and keeping existing ones up to date. We are approaching 7,000 total projects and nearly 3,000 of those are active (Can you believe that!?!?!).
I often say, “It’s not hard to find a project, but it is somewhat hard to fill out all the missing pieces and get a complete picture of that project.” It’s a little harder to keep that project up to date as things change. The real trick, which takes enormous skill and talent, lies in keeping those nearly 3,000 active projects up to date with accurate information. That is no small task. Thankfully, we have a capable and effective team that can and does do it every day.
Last, BEX Events have continued to be a fantastic way to connect with others in the local market. Without events, we would just be a faceless organization that sends a whole lot of emails. Emails work great to deliver content, which is our goal in life, but connection is what makes the content meaningful. Hearing from event attendees that they learned something at one of our programs, made a key connection that is helping them get an ‘in’ with a target client, etc., brings as much real value to us as it does to you.
We look forward to the next 15 years. It’s an honor and privilege to be able to still do this, and we promise our best efforts to keep doing it well.
Thank you, Rebekah Morris